F32 Alpina D4 - total loss of electrickery
Discussion
Over the weekend my D4 (F32 2015) decided it would be fun to loose all electrical power, seemingly without warning, when I paused to give way at a junction. Fortunately I did manage to eventually (say 10 minutes) get enough juice into it from my jump pack for it to turn over and get it home, where upon it did the same thing again.
It's been throwing amber error messages like loss of power steering assist and others, or the main computer would shut down and reboot, without stopping the engine, for a while. That made me think it was low battery due to standing for long periods in lockdown, so I got a solar trickle charger and that seemed to sort it out. But at the weekend it was fully dead with no power for lights, hazards or even to drop the drivers window when the door opens. After checking it with a battery & alternator tester from Amazon which showed the battery was not good but not totally shot either I fitted a new battery (£185 from my local indie motor factor) and coded it with Carly. Everything is fine now, fingers crossed - so much so that I am half tempted to put it down to the D4 being a drama queen jealous of my boggo Z4 getting some summer prep TLC recently. For what it's worth the old battery was BMW labeled and didn't have a date on so I am suspecting it was possibly original.
I've had cars with duff batteries before but not one that has gone from running sweet as a nut to no juice at all in the blink of an eye, and I've had flat batteries where I've left the lights on (That Capri was a sensible choice as a first car despite what my dad thought). I can only think the stop start had kicked in and it didn't have enough beans to restart, and then some form of self protective shut down occurred. So was it just the battery or am I in for a conversation with BMW's warranty department?
Most recent fault codes are in the image. I haven't cleared them yet in case it needs to go to the man with the big hammer & the colours are the rating Carly gave it.
It's been throwing amber error messages like loss of power steering assist and others, or the main computer would shut down and reboot, without stopping the engine, for a while. That made me think it was low battery due to standing for long periods in lockdown, so I got a solar trickle charger and that seemed to sort it out. But at the weekend it was fully dead with no power for lights, hazards or even to drop the drivers window when the door opens. After checking it with a battery & alternator tester from Amazon which showed the battery was not good but not totally shot either I fitted a new battery (£185 from my local indie motor factor) and coded it with Carly. Everything is fine now, fingers crossed - so much so that I am half tempted to put it down to the D4 being a drama queen jealous of my boggo Z4 getting some summer prep TLC recently. For what it's worth the old battery was BMW labeled and didn't have a date on so I am suspecting it was possibly original.
I've had cars with duff batteries before but not one that has gone from running sweet as a nut to no juice at all in the blink of an eye, and I've had flat batteries where I've left the lights on (That Capri was a sensible choice as a first car despite what my dad thought). I can only think the stop start had kicked in and it didn't have enough beans to restart, and then some form of self protective shut down occurred. So was it just the battery or am I in for a conversation with BMW's warranty department?
Most recent fault codes are in the image. I haven't cleared them yet in case it needs to go to the man with the big hammer & the colours are the rating Carly gave it.
I have had a few experiences with flat batteries on relatives’ cars over the lockdown period and with all of them it seems the battery failed immediately (they drove somewhere without any problems then when returned to the car only minutes/hours later it would not start).
New batteries in cars with more electronic controls do seem to fail in a cliff edge style rather than the graceful degradation of older batteries and cars without masses of electronics (is my experience).
If it was the original battery then 7 years is not too bad.
New batteries in cars with more electronic controls do seem to fail in a cliff edge style rather than the graceful degradation of older batteries and cars without masses of electronics (is my experience).
If it was the original battery then 7 years is not too bad.
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